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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24416752">Louvre Palace, Paris, 19 October 1637</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate'>Anima Nightmate (faithhope)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All For One and, well, you know the rest... [40]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Musketeers (2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Conspiracy, Franco-Spanish War, Gen, POV Original Character, Politics, Some Historical Fudging, Thirty Years War, Wartime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:13:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24416752</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tell me again – he’s done <em>what?</em>” Minister Tréville’s tone is low and his face a set of straight lines.</p><p>The servant swallows. “The Marquis has brought in three of his own armed guards. They were challenged as he entered, but he said that this… was in response to your orders, sir.”</p><p>There is going to be hell to pay…</p><p>*</p><p>Another installment in the long series of pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Louis XIII de France &amp; de Tréville (Trois Mousquetaires), Louis XIII de France/Historical Male Character, Louis XIII de France/Milady Clarick de Winter (mentioned)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All For One and, well, you know the rest... [40]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/944322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. En Guarde</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Tell me again – he’s done <em>what?</em>” Minister Tréville’s tone is low and his face a set of straight lines.</p><p>The servant swallows. “The Marquis de Cinq-Mars has brought in three of his own armed guards. They were challenged as he entered, but he said that this… was in response to your orders, sir.”</p><p>Tréville stands on a clatter of chair at this last, extra piece of information and, after a very still moment where the only movement he can discern is the jumping of a muscle in the Minister’s jaw, he roars for his secretary and wheels out of his office, sweeping both men with him.</p><p>“Where is the Marquis now?”</p><p>“Hopefully, sir, still in the entrance hall. The guards were unwilling to let them in any further.”</p><p>“He should have been barred at the damned gate!” The servant guesses that people are going to be losing their jobs over today’s work and is immensely glad to have acted quickly (though wishes he’d been the bearer of happier news). “And the guards already assigned him?”</p><p>He takes a moment to con over the question as they wheel around a corner and approach the main staircase to the entrance hall. “Still with him, sir. They, er, they didn’t look happy, sir.”</p><p>No-one in the entrance hall is looking happy. The Marquis is pacing in short laps, sword swinging at his hip, and it takes him a while to work out what’s different – from above the angle is confounding – and it seems that, on top of the weaponry, the man is wearing either a short, loose doublet or cape instead of his more usual long, tight doublet in the style of the King. (Looking back later, after the shouting is done and he’s recounting this to a couple of close friends, it’s this shift that goes deepest in his understanding of how things have changed.) The Palace guards are in a loose ring around the edges of the space, not exactly blocking anyone in, but making it clear that none of the Marquis’s party is going anywhere. The servant doesn’t feel as though he has much of an eye for military patterns, but the loose fan shape that the new men-at-arms are making with the two assigned guards (distinct from their recent colleagues by badge and cleanliness of boots) seems significant, somehow.</p><p>Next to him, paused at the balustrade, one hard hand resting on the dark wood, the Minister snorts, then takes off again, clattering and calling out: “My Lord, may I have a word?”</p><p>Descending in his wake, the servant sees the other thing he’d missed in his haste to get to Tréville before this situation could deepen: the Marquis’s face, swinging haughtily upwards, his expression’s foundation built on a deep, frustrated rage, has started to sprout a moustache and… yes, a tiny beard, very much in the style of the late Cardinal, he thinks, or even how the Minister wore his own a few years ago. He has a moment to consider how this, as everything the man dons, suits him unfairly well, before the Minister slams to a sudden halt in the face of the oncoming Marquis and he saves himself from falling into his back by the narrowest of margins.</p><p>The Minister’s aide, Robert, composed as ever, gives him a swift side-glance before returning his attention to the unfolding drama.</p><p>Tréville drops his head forward in the manner of someone inviting intimate tones, and de Cinq-Mars leans in, almost involuntarily, by the look of him, as the Minister says, quietly: “My Lord, these men – by whose authority are they here?”</p><p>“Mine,” he answers. Ah, hell.</p><p>“My Lord, any personal guards need to be ratified by me, and are a privilege generally only granted leaders of a foreign power.”</p><p>“But, Minister,” he replies, voice ringing out in that echoing space like a bell, “you gave me no other choice.”</p><p>The servant sees the Minister’s ears move briefly as he clearly grinds his teeth. “My Lord,” he says, tones lower still, “I gave no authorisation for this, and I would advise that you have these men,” there is the mildest of emphases on this last word, and he has no doubt that Tréville’s gaze is flicking between the Marquis and each of his hirelings as he speaks, “depart forthwith.”</p><p>“I will go nowhere without them,” the Marquis declares.</p><p>“Then, my Lord,” and he sees, suddenly, from his expression, that the Marquis is mistaking Tréville’s quiet tones of well-controlled but growing ire for those of a man nervous of public conflict, “I will have to ask you to leave as well.”</p><p>“I will do no such thing!”</p><p>“Then, my Lord, I must again request that you leave them here – I will have refreshments sent – and accompany me to somewhere more…” another possibly teeth-grinding pause, “discreet, where we may conclude this conversation in more–”</p><p>“I am going nowhere with you, and I am going nowhere without them!”</p><p>“My Lord, please listen to reason–” People are starting to accrete around the edges of this contretemps.</p><p>“I have no need to listen to you,” his high, clear tones sing far and wide, to the obvious delight of the gathering onlookers, “and further – no need to <em>answer</em> to you. I tell you that they are here on <em>my</em> authority!”</p><p>And now Tréville discards his decorous manner, his voice striding towards the clarion of a commanding officer: “And <em>I</em> am telling <em>you</em> that matters of security fall under <em>my</em> remit, and that you will leave these… <em>bravos</em> here and come with me to explain your actions in a more appropriate setting.”</p><p>“I answer to no-one but the King, you jumped-up little… upstart.”</p><p>The servant feels the merest of winces crease his well-trained expression at the inelegant variation. He has a moment of feeling obscurely sorry for the Marquis before being rounded on.</p><p>“You! What do you find so amusing?”</p><p>“N-nothing, my lord,” he answers, honestly. If anything, this is tragic.</p><p>“What is your name? I’ll have you whipped and tossed out of here on your ear!”</p><p>“You’ll do no such thing!” Tréville is now properly angry (at least, he tells his friends later, that’s what he’d thought until later, when matters <em>really</em> heated up). “You will come with me now and explain yourself, without your hired ruffians, or by God I’ll see you manacled and dragged to your fate, favourite of the King or no.”</p><p>De Cinq-Mars’s face is a livid white, with tendrils of red seeping up from his neck. “How <em>dare</em> you, you–”</p><p>“I dare, <em>Equerry</em>, because I am the First Minister of France, and I have been protecting the King his life long in one guise or another. And I dare, <em>my Lord</em>, because I have seen his <em>mignons</em> come and go, and very few, if any, departing wisely or well.” As the Marquis starts to sputter over such a description, he leans in, lowering his voice again, “I think you would be well-advised to consider where your predecessor finds herself now.”</p><p>The Marquis’s face is a fist, and the servant finds himself, for the first time, genuinely afraid of the man.</p><p>“We shall see,” he cries, “what the King has to say about this!” and turns on his heel to stride off, at something close to a run, towards the royal apartments.</p><p>The Minister sends one very flat look the way of the Palace guards, who slide in to flank the newcomers more tightly, then nods to Robert, who nods back and turns to the group, smiling slightly, body language very open.</p><p>“You,” says the Minister, “come with me. We’ll need your statement of the beginning of this affair.”</p><p>“Yes, Minister.”</p><p>“Can you run?”</p><p>As fast as de Cinq-Mars? “Yes, Minister.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>And off they go. As they round the corner, he thinks he hears Robert saying, in firmly courteous tones: “Please do take advantage of these rather comfortable chairs, gentlemen…”</p><p>As they pound up the stairs, he finds himself impressed all over again – the Minister has easily fifteen years on him, and is barely out of breath by the time they reach the top. Palace intelligence has it that he still engages in sword drills, walks a brisk circuit of a few miles every day for his constitutional, and rides when he can. The man still, as he has been wont to note in the past, moves and stands as though he has a weapon within reach at all times, and he’s willing to bet that, ministerial lack of sword aside, he still does.</p><p>They can still hear the – now slower – clip of the Marquis’s footsteps in front of them and the Minister moves into a long stride that is harder, somehow, to keep up with than the sprinting pace. Abruptly, momentum unchanged, Tréville turns to him, face breaking slightly out of its grim mould, and asks: “What’s your name? I can’t very well be ‘You there’ing when asking you to bear witness.”</p><p>It’s on the tip of his tongue to say that he very well can, if any of the other authorities in this place are anything to go by, but swallows it and answers, cautiously: “Perrault, Minister. J-Jacques Perrault.”</p><p>“Well, Perrault,” says the Minister with a hard kind of humour, “ready to tell the truth to your King?”</p><p>He takes a deep breath. “First time for everything, sir.”</p><p>And so it’s with a bark of a laugh, hastily swallowed, that the Minister precedes him into the King’s apartments.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><i>Mignon</i> is a French word which means soft or tender; hence, for example, a filet mignon steak. However, it has, of course, taken on another meaning, which people would use to indicate a King’s… favourite.</p><p>(I doubt Milady would be pleased to hear herself styled as <q>soft</q>, nor to hear how the English word <i>minion</i> has grown out of this usage.)</p><p>And yes, you’ve seen Perrault before in these works, I just thought that it was time to give him a name.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Trompement</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They have entered hard on the heels of the Marquis, and the King is frowning up at his favourite, hands gripping the edge of the chaise as he leans forward.</p><p>“What <em>is</em> all this?” his head turns to them, expression clearing into a baffled kind of appeal as they bow to him. “Tréville? What <em>is</em> this?”</p><p>“Your Majesty,” he says, crisply, straightening his torso, before the Marquis can do more than draw breath, “the Marquis and I wished to bring a matter of security to your attention and request your judgement.”</p><p>The Marquis glares daggers at the Minister, who appears not to notice, eyes fixed on the King. Perrault swallows, keeps his own head low, wonders where he’s supposed to stand, decides he’ll stay quiet until or unless called to speak.</p><p>The King sighs. “Will one of you explain?” The Minister and Marquis eye each other cautiously. “Oh,” he goes on, flapping a hand, “I suppose it’s all about this men-at-arms business. I thought that had been sorted out…”</p><p>Perrault realises several things as he sees the knuckles of the King’s other hand whiten on the chaise, most pertinent of which is that the man is exhausted. </p><p>The King’s long wig is on tidily and he’s fully (and immaculately) dressed, but something strikes him as incomplete, somehow, and he isn’t even able to put his finger on it in retrospect, will just tell his friends that something wasn’t quite right.</p><p>“Not… <em>quite</em>… Your Majesty,” says Tréville, cautiously.</p><p>“Well…?”</p><p>“This man!” bursts out de Cinq-Mars. “This… this <em>paper-scratcher</em> continues to thwart me at every turn!”</p><p>The King turns a rising eyebrow towards the Minister.</p><p>Tréville takes a slow, deep breath. “He has brought unauthorised armed men into your Palace, sire, and–”</p><p>“Because <em>you</em> refused to let me see him to ask for proper ones!”</p><p>Tréville turns a frown to the Marquis, looking genuinely puzzled. Then his brow clears, head tilting a little. “His Majesty was indisposed on that day, wh–”</p><p>“<em>Why</em> wouldn’t you <em>see</em> me?!”</p><p>The King looks unusually calm as he asks: “When was this?”</p><p>“Last week!”</p><p>“I have not been well, Henri, you know that–”</p><p>“You saw <em>him!</em>”</p><p>“I saw no-one,” continues the King, still remarkably gently, “except my own body servants.”</p><p>“That is not what I heard!”</p><p>“I think you may have been misinf–” starts Tréville.</p><p>“Don’t <em>lie</em> to me!” and the Marquis actually stamps his foot.</p><p>He’s been teased before about the way his imagination works, but Perrault seems to see a crack running through the floor, starting from the heel of the Marquis’s pristine riding boot. It divides the room untidily.</p><p>“<em>Henri!</em>”</p><p>“He <em>insulted</em> me!”</p><p>“When?” And the cracks of impatience now run through the King’s voice and demeanour, tightening in his knuckles and around his eyes. “Tréville has been nothing but–”</p><p>“In the hall! Earlier!” The Marquis is outright panting with rage now. “He called me a…” he swallows, colour rising rapidly in his cheeks, “a <em>mignon</em>, and–”</p><p>“And what of it?” asks the King, with something like amusement and something like fondness in his expression. He holds up both hands, one above the other, palms cupping as if to clasp the Marquis’s between them. “You are my soft, delightful b–”</p><p>The Marquis snatches his arms across his own chest. “<em>Don’t</em> call me a <em>boy!</em>” every line of him taut and imperious.</p><p>The King sighs, drops his hands and gaze to his lap. “Very well.” He looks up again. “What would you have me do?”</p><p>The Marquis arches an eyebrow and points to Tréville, other hand on his hip. “Dismiss him.”</p><p>The Minister looks away on a short sigh, his own eyebrow rises and eyes rolling slightly. It’s enough to push de Cinq-Mars over the edge.</p><p>“You <em>dare!</em> You <em>dare</em> to pull faces at me, you upstart wretch!”</p><p>“‘Upstart’?” asks Tréville in a mildly bemused voice, head swinging back towards him.</p><p>“At least <em>my</em> family… My ancestors… We–”</p><p>“Yes. Your father was a friend of the late Cardinal’s. We know. And <em>I</em> knew your father too. You’re just the latest in a long line of dissolute hangers-on who can’t decide which church they belong to.” All in level tones, his eyes narrowing across the focus of his weapon. “Furthermore, <em>boy</em>–” his voice finally heating a little.</p><p>“<em>Don’t</em> call me <em>boy!</em>”</p><p>The Minister’s mouth quirks. “I will stop as soon as you quit behaving like one.” On the far side of his body to his opponent, his hand wraps itself slowly into a broad fist while his face betrays very little.</p><p>Perrault feels his own breathing grow shallow.</p><p>“Now, Henri–” starts the King.</p><p>“For God’s <em>sake</em>, Louis!”</p><p>The King stands, face clenching. “<em>You</em>,” he says, “will address me as Your Majesty or Sire while we are so engaged. Do you understand?”</p><p>De Cinq-Mars glowers, arms crossing again.</p><p>“Now,” starts the King, and takes a deep breath, which immediately turns into a heavy fit of coughing. He sways and, reacting purely on well-trained instinct, Perrault takes two long steps forward to steady the King’s elbow and guide him back down to the chaise, seeing Tréville’s arms reach and return from the corner of his eye. He turns to a nearby table, catching the gaze of the servant on duty who holds his and nods. He pours wine and water into a goblet and passes it to the King, hovering in case he needs assistance – he does not, drinking slowly but steadily – and retrieves the cup when it’s handed away, wiping the rim with the cloth he’d already picked up reflexively before stepping back into position.</p><p>The only sound is that of everyone breathing, the King’s coming heaviest of all. Then the Marquis sighs loudly and turns his head away slightly.</p><p>Perrault can’t help it – his eyes dart to Tréville for his reaction, sees the man’s gaze follow de Cinq-Mars’s movement, eyes narrowing, jaw bunching. Tréville catches his eye and nods minutely, visibly forcing himself to relax.</p><p>“My dear Marquis,” says the King, through gritted teeth, though from temper or discomfort, Perrault is hard-put to say, “having given your request consideration, I must tell you that no – you may <em>not</em> have any further armed guards here than the –” he looks to Tréville, whose hand moves discreetly, “two you have already been assigned. <em>Furthermore</em>,” his volume rises as the Marquis draws breath as though to remonstrate, “you must immediately dismiss your new men-at-arms unless you wish to dismiss yourself from your position here.”</p><p>Perrault dares a peek over at de Cinq-Mars, sees him pale with rage, colour threading hectically up from his neck, lips pressed together in a white, straight line. He nods once, stiffly, then turns on the ball of his foot and flees the room.</p><p>The King heaves a deep breath. “Go after him, would you, Tréville? I would not see him come to harm through sheer youthful stubbornness.”</p><p>Tréville bows briefly, face impassive. “Of course, Your Majesty.”</p><p>As he wheels out, Perrault bows deeply to the King and scurries after the Minister.</p><p>What happens next is confusing, and his friends have him tell it over at least twice more that evening. Later he gets some information from another servant who was closer-by, and the conjoined pieces look something like this:</p><p>De Cinq-Mars, charging down the corridor in his flapping short-cape, brushes past Philipe de Feron, one of the oldest of the King’s various half-brothers.</p><p>The older Marquis staggers back, hand to his chest, thumps against the wall. He then, as Tréville approaches, calls out, very weakly, croaking as if from a congestion of the chest: “My Lord! You dropped–!”</p><p>Tréville pauses for a moment to check on the Marquis’s wellbeing. De Feron coughs and mutters and beats him away with one hand, leaning heavily with the other on his ebony cane. “Fine, I’m fine, man!” he chokes out.</p><p>“Very well, my Lord,” responds Tréville, with a curt nod, then looks to the ground. “Yours, sir?”</p><p>“None of mine,” he grumbles, and hurples off in the opposite direction, rounding the corner and tapping away unevenly into the distance.</p><p>Perrault catches up with the Minister, who has scooped the fallen, folded paper off the ground, frowning at it, before stuffing it in his pocket and swooping off again after the younger Marquis.</p><p>For want of better instruction, Perrault follows him and they pause again at the balustrade to see de Cinq-Mars rounding up his men with loud, high tones, and great sweeps of the arm. What he does not tell his friends, and he couldn’t tell you why, because the scene stayed painted brightly in his mind, is that, for a moment, one of the officially assigned guards – the one with the difficult-to-pronounce name and shock of auburn hair even brighter than the Marquis’s own – looks up and back to catch the Minister’s eye, bright green to bright blue. He watches them nod to each other before the Breton guard is pulled into the Marquis’s wake. He then watches Tréville, frowning suddenly, reach into his pocket and unfold the paper.</p><p>It’s then, he tells his friends, that he sees anger sweep over and through the Minister like a tidal bore, and he has no shame in confessing that he took half a step back at the sight of it.</p><p>The Minister’s jaw bulges and he very deliberately folds the paper back on itself before returning it, even more carefully, to his pocket, breath controlled but heavy. He looks up, smiles on something of a flinch.</p><p>“Perrault,” he says, eyes sharp but mind clearly miles away. He gives one of those brusque little nods that marks him for what he truly is. “Thank you. For… both sets of swift action today.”</p><p>“Yes, Minister.” He feels, of all things, a blush approaching. “Thank you, Minister.”</p><p>“Very good,” he says, on another nod, and, with that, strides away to his own offices.</p><p>Perrault, now at something of a loss for what to do, returns downstairs to the entrance hall, pulling his scattered wits together to try to remember what he’d been about before this whole adventure whirled him under. Later, feet up by a small, comfortable fire, recounting his day, he grows silent and his closer friend nudges him. “Hmm? Oh, sorry. That’s it.”</p><p>“Well,” says their other friend, philosophically, “he’s given us a good stretch of entertainment, so here’s to the Marquis – may he continue to fret and pout, to all good men’s amusement!”</p><p>“To the Marquis!” the others return, raising their glasses, and Perrault finally lets go of his lingering disquiet in the clamour of laughter and good company.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>From Wikipedia’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_fencing">Glossary of Fencing</a> comes <b>Trompement:</b> (Archaic) The action of hitting an opponent at the end of a feint, after a successful deception.</p><p>De Cinq-Mars’s insult for Tréville comes from the French <i>gratte-papier</i>, or paper-scratcher, the equivalent of pen(cil)-pusher in English. Thanks go again to a member of the discord server for giving me this.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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